You guys keep commiting the same major fallacies. They very much connect to each other, but I'll try to separate them to make it easier.
1. You trivialize the problem by reducing it to one specific scenario, and then you assume that it is general to all scenarios. Then you look for a solution which, from that assumption, seems to cover the core issue, but in reality only touches a very small part of the problem. I.e. you identify all sellers with the archetype of a Venezuelan man who, after probably reaching level 15, for the rest of his life only stands in one place, makes runes, and sends them to random characters, like a robot. And of course, he has to be searching for random buyers by openly advertising himself on a certain facebook group.
This fallacy has been commited in several ways, examples:
- "You just have to ban all of Venezuela" - but what about Brazilian, Colombian or Polish vendors?
- "You just have to join some facebook group" - but what about all the other groups, websites, teamspeaks, discords, established exclusive sellers etc.?
- In your case @xKrazyx it is focusing only on the runemakers that do nothing but create runes and send them to other players. But what about those who act differently, e.g. make and sell gold by hunting? They play quite normally, aside of transferring some of that gold away from time to time. It only takes to pretend that (e.g.) they pay for protection/freedom. @rinoo had done this too, he had assumed that he could get rid of p2w by getting rid of runes (though he later revised his goal), while ignoring gold, items, and all the other (no less significant) aspects of p2w.
A word from me: I had been playing this game for many years (mostly real Tibia, then Tibianic and Medivia, but many other servers too). I wasn't a trader-type, but over those years, I made many deals myself, and I knew many players who did as well. I also met many Venezuelans, even played in mostly-Venezeulan team at some point. Going further, I've personally banned thousands of accounts in Tibiantis, many of which I knew were intended to make money. I've also watched behavior of numerous types of players in Tibiantis, and I have data to say that many Venezuelans in fact do have main chars. Despite their connection issues, they even reach high levels (some even play paladins). Lastly, I had even investigated those trade groups of yours myself and I know that most of the stuff there, in terms of total value, is not even runes and doesn't come from Venezuelans. My perspective is wide enough to say that you guys have a completely wrong idea here. Your presumed seller-archetype is only a very small fraction of the reality. I'm guessing that most of you are probably biased from witnessing all those huge farms of multi-clienting runemakers on other servers, where they indeed constituted the majority online and flooded the market wholesale, but which are NOT EXISTING on Tibiantis.
2. The second fallacy: you do not take into account that by action you influence circumstances, and people tend to adapt to new conditions. I.e. you claim that it's "easy to tell" who does what because they don't hide it, but you don't assume that if they only had a reason to hide, they would. After taking action the first consequence is change of the pattern, and not just "everyone stops doing it altogether". So you need to predict those consequences and think ahead. Examples:
- "You just have to ban all of Venezuela" - ignoring the existance of other sellers (see: fallacy number 1.), who may take their place (supply-demand rules), and also ignoring that the Venezuelans may start hiding their identity.
- "You just have to join some facebook group and bait them" - ignoring the existance of other platforms and nowhere-advertised sellers (see: fallacy number 1.), and not taking into account that people can move their "business" to a more moderated/controlled environment.
- Focusing only on the runemakers, and only those that work in a certain pattern, while ignoring the existance of others (see: fallacy number 1.), and not taking into account that those runemakers may change their pattern as well (e.g. by selling gold and not runes).
3. The third fallacy lies in ignoring the fact that we live in a world of limited time and resources. Assuming infinite time and resources everything would be possible, but in reality you need to work in reasonable time and resources.
@xKrazyx did consider that to a degree, but there were other examples:
- Saying that we could surely solve it if we only wanted, because "where there's will there's a way", and ignoring that it's just a motivational phrase that does not correspond to reality literally.
- Expecting us to be buying out a big part of the public black market in order to ban the sellers, while ignoring that there is also that less public market (see: fallacy nr 1.), that traders can move to (see: fallacy nr 2.), and not taking into account that it would require unreasonable amount of real money, unlimited number of identities, and can't be done in a reasonable time.
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@xKrazyx
Now referring to your idea specifically. You're talking about finding "possible" traders, i.e. "suspects for further investigation", but you missed the most important part: how do you eventually determine that they've indeed made real money trades? Please, go to my post that you've quoted and refer to point: "2. Why we can't ban everyone based on the flow of items".
I guess, that you simply mean they could be banned based on the assumption that certain pattern, e.g. sending away X number of runes without getting anything in exchange, must indicate real money trade? If that's the case, I can easily think of many possible false positives here. Sure, probably the less the more data included, but if it takes months to gather enough data - they will just create a new character every few months, and that's all. It would be by far too ineffective to realistically solve anything. That's on top of the other issues, that are already covered in the first part of this post.
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I'm tired of this topic already, since it became redundant from repeating the same arguments over and over. Therefore, I won't reply to it anymore, unless a really groundbreaking point is brought up (which I doubt). I tried my best to cover all of it in detail in this post and
the one before. The conclusion is that "p2w" is an unpleasant but inseparable part of Tibia, because it results directly from its nature, and it can't be effectively stopped or marginalized in the real world conditions. I don't think there's anything more to add, so please, refer to these two posts with any new "what if". Thank you.
